Condoleezza
Rice wants to bring democracy to the Middle East. Ms. Rice, an expert on
what is now an obsolete subject, the Soviet Union, believes this can be done
the way the United States brought democracy to Chile or Iran or Afghanistan
-- that is, by violently overthrowing governments.

Does democracy come from
the full belly of a B-52 and the murderous aftermath of coups?

Apparently not. Virtually
none of the countries that America's freedom-loving army of enlightenment
has bombed and shot-up over the last sixty years is today a democracy.

One is reminded of the
claims of Napoleonic France that it was spreading revolutionary principles
by conquest. The conquest part was vigorously pursued, but the liberté,
egalitié, et fraternité part left a little something to be desired.

Ms. Rice displays little
understanding of the history of democracy or of the circumstances which make
it possible. She is not alone in this. Former Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright's efforts on "democracy initiatives" displayed a similar lack of
understanding, although it must be said in Ms. Albright's favor, she was
less inclined than the ever-hysterical Ms. Rice to classify unprovoked
attack by a great power as an initiative for democracy.

Democracy is simply a
natural development of a healthy, growing society. Over the long term, it
requires no revolution, no coup, and no sacred writ. It grows and blooms as
automatically as flower seeds tossed in a good patch of earth, although it
is a plant whose maturity is measured in human lifetimes rather than
seasons.

The early United States
after its revolution was no more a democracy than was the Mother Country.
The authority of Britain's monarchy had long been limited by the growing
authority of Parliaments. Even that mighty ruler, Elizabeth I, more than a
century and a half before George III and the American Revolution, felt the
limits of Parliament closing in on her.

George III, despite later
American myths, was very much a constitutionally-limited monarch. For some
time, up to and during the Revolution, there were many prominent American
colonists who felt that the machinations of the British Parliament were
thwarting the intentions of the king and endangering the health of the
empire. Even at that early time, people understood that elected government
was just as capable of bad policy as a royal one or an aristocratic one.
Indeed, the genius of the British (unwritten) constitution was seen by most
thoughtful American colonists as being in the way it combined the three
forms of government to offset each other, the direct origin of the American
concept of "checks and balances" by branches of government.

While the British franchise
was then highly restricted, it was no less so in the early United States. It
is estimated that maybe 1% of the population could vote in early Virginia
with all the restrictions of age, sex, race, and ownership of property.
That's actually roughly comparable to the percentage of people making
decisions in contemporary Communist China where about 60 million party
members hold sway over about 1.2 billion people.

The American Revolution did
not produce anything resembling a democracy. Nor did the later
Constitutional Convention. It took about two hundred years of growth and
change in the United States for that to happen. The powerful Senate, able to
block the elected President's appointments and treaties, only changed from
being an appointed body to an elected one in 1913. The Senate to this day
uses undemocratic operating rules and bizarre election patterns to shield it
against public opinion.

The popular vote for
President did not matter originally. Apart from the fact that only a small
number of males meeting property requirements could vote, the members of the
Electoral College, drawn from political elites, were the ones whose votes
actually counted. This absurdly out-of-date and anti-democratic institution
still exists, and it can cause serious problems as we saw in the election of
2000.

Women only got the vote in
1920. Blacks in the American South only received an effective franchise a
few decades ago. In some places, like parts of Florida, recent elections
suggest that methods may still operate to limit the franchise of black
citizens.

America has two parties
sharing a quasi-monopoly on political power, and they produce much the same
effects in the body politic that quasi-monopolies produce in the market
place. The two quasi-monopoly parties are financed through a corrupt system
of private donations. America herself still has a considerable way to go
along the path to democracy.

Yet Americans generally
believe that their Revolution and Constitutional Convention created a
full-blown democracy and near-perfect system of government right from the
start. Perhaps this explains the blind faith of people like Ms. Rice in
thinking that if you just have a big war or coup somewhere, you can create a
democracy.

Democracy comes gradually
because it represents a massive social change that affects all relationships
in society. The chief driving force towards democracy is the emergence of a
strong middle class whose members have too much at stake to leave decisions
to a king or group of aristocrats. The size of the middle class expands by
steady economic growth. In the West, this process of change has proceeded
steadily since the Renaissance and the rise of science and applied
technology, with variations in the pattern of individual countries
reflecting adjustments to peculiarities of local culture, invasions, civil
wars, and varying rates of economic change.

Many of the societies
America looks askance at in the world today make no progress towards
democracy because they make little progress of any kind, especially economic
progress. Static societies with little or no economic growth are ones where
ancient customs and social relationships do not change, where kings or
warlords rule just as they did thousands of years ago in early societies.

Economic growth is like a
magical solvent that begins to erode old relationships. And given enough of
it, over a considerable period of time, it erodes old ways of governing
completely. This process is observable even within regions of a country. The
American South was remarkably backward and static for a good part of the
20th century. But the shift of business and middle-class populations to the
sunbelt during the middle of the century brought some rapid change - ergo,
the phenomenon known as the New South.

It has been said that if,
in the wake of 9/11, the United States truly had wanted to battle for
democracy and human rights, it would have dropped dollar bills rather than
bombs on Afghanistan. That, of course, is an exaggeration, but it contains
important truth.

The United States could
make a genuine contribution to the spread of democracy were it to focus
attention on the economies of the world's more backward places. It might
start with some generosity in foreign aid. The United States is the
stingiest of all advanced countries in giving economic assistance to poor
countries, giving at an annual rate of 1/10 of one percent of its GDP.

Reducing or doing away with
American agricultural subsidies that impoverish third-world farmers would
also be a great help. So, too, the tariff and non-tariff barriers that the
U.S. uses against many products from these struggling countries.

Paying its dues to the
United Nations and ending its childish carping about that important
institution would help, since U.N. agencies perform many valuable services
for the world's children, its refugees, and international cooperation and
understanding.

In general, concern for
democracy calls for the U.S. to start behaving more like a responsible
neighbor in the international community and rather less like an 18th century
French aristocrat who barely notices as his carriage thumps over the body of
whoever happened to be in its path.

John Chuckman
lives in Canada and is former chief economist for a large Canadian oil
company. He writes frequently for Yellow Times.org and other publications.